February 26: To The New Second Line Manager

What is effective management? I see two schools: one that empowers people and fosters a great culture and… another one. As a new second line manager, a manager of managers, you have the unique opportunity to set the tone for the managers that work for you and, therefore, for the culture of your organization.

Let’s view these approaches to first line management through the lens of situational leadership as a conversation with your first line management direct reports.

Empowerment

You are not an arbiter of taste. You are not being paid more to inflict your more expensive, more correct opinions on your subordinates. You are being paid more to foster an environment that helps your subordinates achieve more than they would without you there. That “more” is ideally worth more than your salary. If not, then why are you there?

“But wait, my opinions are really quite good, the best in fact. Without the benefit of my opinions, my directs would be lost, confused, and make bad decisions.”

Every Micromanager Ever

Imagine a 2×2 matrix. The X-axis is the degree of “rightness” of your judgment:

• • 1 is you staving off disaster

  • 0 is you being the disaster

The Y-axis is the degree of “empowerment”:

• • 1 is you leaving the decision to your direct

  • 0 is you calling the shot

Because your opinions are more expensive, let’s shift the Y-axis to the left and assume you’re right about your subordinate’s direct area of responsibility more often than you’re wrong (hah!). Starting from the top left and moving clockwise.

Quadrant 1: No Op, Cheerleader

You have bad ideas (or no ideas), but at least you don’t impose them on others. And your directs seem to like you.

Quadrant 2: Influence, Teach, Guide, Take Responsibility

You create processes and guard rails, you mentor your team, you leave the decisions to them, and, when they mess up, you take the blame. Like Jocko Willink in Extreme Ownership or like an even older philosopher.

A leader is best when people barely know he exists,

when his work is done, his aim fulfilled,

they will say: we did it ourselves.

Lao Tzu

Now that is NOT to say you should be disconnected from ground truth as a manager! I love the Jeff Bezos Support hold-time story. As you listen to him speak, you will note his focus on collecting the right data, managing based on the right metrics, and really taking responsibility for a bad customer experience.

Quadrant 3: Benevolent Micromanagement

You manage a team of individuals who can only function due to your constant intervention. And despite you masterfully communicating your design philosophy, product wisdom, and business intent through frequent communications, well-timed coaching, and well-considered processes, these people just don’t get it and still insist on bad decisions at every turn that you need to overrule.

Oh… and one more thing… there is no Quadrant 3. You are actually in Quadrant 4.

Quadrant 4: Malevolent Micromanagement

You impose your bad ideas forcefully on your team. When they succeed, you claim the credit. When they fail, which is more often than not, you blame their execution of your flawless ideas. They predictably lose all joy in their work. Your entire team resigns. You hire a new team. This happens two more times. You are moved somewhere you can do less damage. Preferably outside the company. Or perhaps your whole company operates this way and has a median employee tenure of 1 year.

Servant Leadership

Your team is not there to help you get your work done. You are there to help them get their work done. You have been entrusted with the careers of people the company has deemed capable of making contributions far in excess of their salaries. You must ensure they can make (and are broadly recognized for) that impact to justify your salary.

What it isn’t

Do you see people as expendable units of brainpower to advance your goals? Or do you see yourself as a coach and enabler for the people entrusted to your care to bring their best to work? Do you think your directs are beneath you because they are literally beneath you on the org chart? Or do you get a dopamine hit when a long-held belief is shown to be incorrect in a discussion with your direct? Do comments like, “I will open the door, but if they don’t walk through it, f- them.” or “Employees need to adjust to me because I may be tired or grumpy or not feel like adjusting to them.” resonate with or disgust you?

The responsibility of a subordinate

Stephen Covey and Jocko Willink would say that your role as a subordinate should be to control what you can, yourself, and take 100% responsibility for forging a great relationship with your toxic boss. And… you should if you value succeeding in that organization. But I’m advising a new second line manager on how to create a great culture, not advising someone on how (and whether) to survive a bad boss.

The responsibility of a manager

As a manager, your role is to ensure that those on your team can make and are broadly recognized for the maximum contribution they can make to the organization’s mission.

Comments like those in the “What it isn’t” section indicate a manager that abuses their positional power, neglects their responsibility to coach, and has no business operating in a company that I – or anyone with options – would want to work at. Can a manager burp, fart, or expound interminable nonsense and suffer no consequence? Yes. Can a manager exhibit disrespectful behaviors (e.g., interrupting, being late to 1:1s, dismissively rejecting suggestions) towards their directs without consequence? Yes. What stops them from doing so? Only their internal sense of propriety and decency as human beings. Is this propriety a requirement for management? No. Is this decency measured in any way in manager performance evaluations? No. Are unprecedentedly high or low employee survey scores at companies like Microsoft career makers or breakers? No. If a manager has three full team rosters resign, does the realization dawn on higher-ups that maybe this person isn’t a good manager? Sometimes. My point: Striving to be a great manager comes from within you, from your desire to be a better person, to be better at your craft, and to positively impact the people around you.

Ownership, Taking Responsibility, Giving Credit

Okay, that’s great. I like it. So, if I influence, guide, and take responsibility, I will be a great manager and get promoted, right? Maybe. You will maximize the likelihood of getting the most out of the highest potential people who work for you. But your organization may neither value nor need that to achieve spectacular growth. Your company might be famous, have forty people at the top who make all the decisions, and be perfectly fine churning through a new round of hired hands each year. Your leadership may want to see you kicking ass and taking names. Your organization may not trust its workers and believe in an all-stick-no-carrot approach. To paraphrase: “When all you have is an abundance of sticks, everyone looks like a lazy mule.” I’ve seen management respond to low employee evaluations by tying each person’s performance rating to the team’s employee evaluation score. A variation on this bit of enlightened management insight.

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

Unknown

In such an organization, servant leadership will appear weak, and a plantation overseer approach will be more pleasing to leadership. And pleasing leadership is how you advance. And pleasing leadership ultimately comes down to getting good results. But were those good results due to your servant leadership or despite it? Because just as I say that Quadrant 3 is actually Quadrant 4, many leadership teams will see every Quadrant 2 leader as a Quadrant 1 no op. Here you must balance self-promotion (looking out for yourself) with servant leadership (looking out for your people). This is what Barry Oshry calls feeling Torn in the Middle. And this is why you make the big bucks. I will close with a dichotomy of leadership.